Harley Neville is one of New Zealand’s great up-and-coming artists. As a filmmaker, his work has already made its way around the world online and through his lead performance in the horror-comedy I Survived a Zombie Holocaust.
It was his honest and confronting poetry, however, that saw Neville take centre-stage at Tedx Ruakura on July 30th. Dealing with issues like globalisation and the environment, his poems might be perceived as standing in stark contrast to the rest of his body of work, but in truth they serve as proof as his expansive talent as a performer.
We talked with Neville about his career, focusing on his poem Gravity, undoubtedly one of his most powerful pieces yet.
When did you first get into spoken word poetry?
Up until the age of 28 I thought poetry was fiercely uncool, however that all began to change as I went through what I now see was a quarter-life crisis. Up until that point I had been an extroverted person, but I turned my thoughts inwards and didn’t really like what I saw. I began to question everything that I knew about myself and it was very traumatic. As catharsis to this I began writing poetry about the things that concerned me.
When did you first start using it as a means of social commentary?
I’m inspired by things that scare me, a lot of which are social issues, so my writing took on a social commentary role as soon as I realised what a ridiculous species we are. We exchange wood for plastic and wonder why our planet is dying. Part of me wants to give up and just go back to eating McDonalds so that I can let someone else worry about the world, but another part of me hopes that by talking about these issues through poetry I might actually help affect a positive change in humanity, even if I don’t notice it in my own lifetime.
Can you describe what led you to writing Gravity?
I was a Christian up until the age of 27 but I always had a lot of questions and never felt fully satisfied with the answers that the Bible provided. As a result, I was always asking my Christian friends and teachers about various inconsistencies that I saw, and what I found was that the more questions I asked, the more vague, distant and even angry they would become.
It wasn’t until I stumbled upon a compilation of essays by Richard Dawkins called A Devil’s Chaplain that I finally found the answers I was seeking, I had never heard of him before, but that was easily the most influential book I have ever read. I put it down and never prayed again; in fact, I felt embarrassed that I had ever prayed at all.
A year later my embarrassment had turned to anger; the more I thought about it, the more I realised how much time and effort I had wasted with Christianity and the more I read the more aware I became of the many atrocities that religion is responsible for, and I became angrier still. At this point I was not a poet but I had an interest in it.
The final piece fell into place when I stumbled upon a poem on YouTube called Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus by the evangelical Christian poet Jefferson Bethke. It was then that I realised what I had to do to let go of my anger: I had to become a poet, and start a poetry beef with Jefferson Bethke.
Until you started performing and releasing poetry, you were best known for your comedic work. Has it been difficult to make people who are aware of your other work take you seriously?
I think people were quite surprised when Gravity came out. I got messages from people I hadn’t heard from in a long time saying that I was smarter than they had thought I was. I didn’t really know how to take that. Overall, I don’t think it was actually too much of a surprise, people that know me know to expect the unexpected.
What was it like performing at TEDx?
TEDx was the opportunity of a lifetime; it felt amazing. It was a full house, and an intelligent audience which is obviously very intimidating; after all, who am I to get up on stage and tell these people about worldly social events? Furthermore, I was sharing the stage with well-established intellectuals. we won’t go into my high school grades, but suffice to say I don’t qualify for the label of ‘intellectual’. All that aside though, I nailed it! The video will be out soon.
What kind of reaction do you hope to inspire in those who hear your poems?
Most of my poems are inspired by personal revelations of my own; for instance, Gravity was the realisation that God is a manmade construct. The inspiration for my poem Dope New Shoes struck me after I came to the realisation that I was a bad person; after all, how could I call myself a good person while simultaneously financing slavery in the third world and animal cruelty in the first world with my purchasing habits? What good person does that?
My goal is inspire those same revelations in other people, not only because the future of our civilisation depends on it but because I found them to be very empowering, if a little painful.
See more of Harley Neville’s work via the playlist above, or visit The Skeptical Poet on Youtube.
You can also check out I Survived a Zombie Holocaust on iTunes.